Reports from Japan say the first incident in a predicted wave of iPhone-centric street robberies has occurred a full two days before the US launch of Apple’s world-changing, famine-ending, disease-curing ‘Jesus phone’ that is destined to be all things to all men. (And let’s face it, most buyers will be men.) Even more peculiar is the fact that no-one even knows if Japan will ever get an iPhone, as there’s no GSM network in the country.

Nevertheless, sources say the victim - Taro Tanaka, 26 - was set upon at night in Kunitachi, a western Tokyo suburb, by at least three braying assailants convinced his chrome cigarette case was in fact an iPhone.

A bemused Tanaka told reporters: “If they’re that desperate they could have had my iRiver player instead - I really want a smoke now. Besides, my real phone has 3.6Mbps HSDPA; an IC-chip that works as a train ticket, bus ticket, e-cash, e-credit and can open doors; a 5-megapixel camera with optical zoom and auto-focus; real songs as ringtones; a dictionary; face recognition; a barcode reader and ringtones that make my girlfriend’s tits bigger. Oh, and not only did it cost me nothing, I’m not stuck with a two-year contract either.”

Instead of snaring themselves one of the most amazing inventions since the wheel, the perps are now on the run from Japanese police, Interpol, the CIA and a balding bearded man in a black polo-neck furious that anyone could be so stupid as to mistake a shiny box of inconsequential stuff for the splendor of an iPhone. The fools.

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